onsdag 27. februar 2013

A
few days ago I was surprised to learn that my friend Sarah had nominated my blog for
the Liebster Award, an award given to bloggers by other bloggers
whose writings they like and contents they find interesting. I'm very
grateful to Sarah for this nomination, and I gladly accept the
obligation further this nomination according to the Liebster Award
rules, which are as follows:

1.
Thank your Liebster Blog Award presenter on your blog and link back
to the blogger who presented this award to you.
2. Answer the 11
questions from the nominator, list 11 random facts about yourself and
create 11 questions for your nominees.
3. Present the Liebster
Blog Award to 11 blogs of 200 followers or less who you feel deserve
to be noticed and leave a comment on their blog letting them know
they have been chosen. (No tag backs)
4. Copy and Paste the blog
award on your blog

Anglophilia and history: Exhibition Square in York

My
questions from SarahWhat
is your favourite book, of all time?

This
is practically an impossible question to answer, as I have many
favourite books of such a great variety that it is difficult to
choose between them. However, two of the books I've re-read the most
are Alistair MacLean's World War II thriller Force
10 from Navarone
and Geoffrey Hill's recent collection of poems Clavics.

Which five
historical figures would you invite to your fantasy dinner party?

Too
many to enumerate. One of the worst is the tendency to sometimes
forget what people say to me only minutes after it has been said,
which makes me sometimes come off more arrogant than I really am.

Facebook
or twitter?

That depends
entirely on purpose. For keeping up with friends I prefer Facebook.
To connect with like-minded people from all over the world and share
ideas and knowledge, twitter is by far the better alternative.

Do you have a pet
hate?

Several. The two
biggest are anachronisms in novels or films and hipsters. Hipsters
ruin so much for me.

I find it difficult
to assess which moments or experiences have been truly life-changing,
largely because there are so many factors which compel us to take the
roads we end up on, and in most cases we are not aware of these
choices until long afterwards. Accordingly, there have been many
books, movies and songs that have changed my life in various ways,
but one I would like to point to is Umbert Eco's marvellous novel
Baudolino, which I read when I was 19. The book really opened
my eyes to the Middle Ages and gave a fertile ground in which the
later exposures of academia could blossom into an enamoration.

Are there any
historical fiction ‘crimes’ that really
get on your nerves?

Anachronism
is a major problem for me, but also cynicism. It's too easy to depict
historical agents according to some objective mechanics we construct
with hindsight, rather than embracing the idiosyncratic humanity of
people inhabiting ages past. This is particularly the case in the
depiction of the medieval religious. What
is your greatest achievement to date?

My
MA thesis.

Commemorative photo of me at my reading desk, taken after I had recieved the printed copies of my thesis

Can you tell us about one of your
goals for the future?

I
would very much like to write a book at some point. Novel,
non-fiction, poetry collection, it's pretty much all the same.What
is your favourite thing about blogging?

First
of all that I can share a wide variety of things and thoughts with
like-minded people. Secondly, I like blogging because it inhabits a
middle-ground between gossip and academia, meaning that when I write
on historical or history-related subjects, I need some of the rigour
of academic writing, but at the same time I'm much more independent.
And finally, have I
annoyed you by nominating you for the Liebster?

Not in the least, so
thank you again!

York Minster, picture taken from the city walls

Eleven facts
about me

1) My favourite band
is Dire Straits and has been since I was at least fourteen years old.

2) I'm a committed
anglophile.

3) I actually like
British cuisine, or at least great parts of it, but I will never
understand why sausage rolls are so popular.

4) I sometimes spend
hours on end stalking Italian cities on Google Maps. Usually on the
wrong side of midnight.

5) Despite having
visited Schiphol several times, I have not properly been to the
Netherlands.

6) I find the Dutch
language to be a charming one, although completely unintelligible
when spoken.

7) I have a
fascination with small countries, particularly Nauru, Andorra, San
Marino and Liechtenstein.

8) I didn't know I
wanted to be a medievalist until my second year at university.

General Grier's Civil War - letters from Brevet Brigadier General David Perkins Grier, of the 77th Illinois Volunteer Regiment, transcribed and made accessible for the reading public. A fascinating source to Civil War history.

In the Middle - a joint venture of medieval scholars presenting articles, extracts, musings and tidbits from their academic work.

ivry twr - concerned primarily with digital humanities, ivy twr presents articles, podcasts and videos embracing a wide variety of academic subjects with the digital age as its vantage point.

medievalfragments - the blog of a project concerned with medieval manuscripts, led by twitter's Erik Kwakkel.

Text Technology - with a medieval focus, this blog is concerned with text technologies throughout history.

The Cantos of Mvtabilitie - An Oxford don's infrequent musings of a wide variety of subjects. This was the blog that inspired me to start My Albion.

fredag 22. februar 2013

In the course of
my three years as a teaching assistant I have grown accustomed to the
rhythm of the essay weeks, and today was what I've come to term
Disappointment Day. This is the deadline of the final essay, which
ideally should contain all the corrections they've been asked to
include in the feedback sessions. Ideally, the final essay should be
a coherent text which tackles the assignment without any trace of
hesitation of lack of control, and which is structured so neatly the
reader has no difficulty following the flow of the arguments which
culminate in a well-wrought conclusion. But this, as stated, is the
ideal world.

The truth, as I've
come to learn the hard way, is drastically different, and this is the
day when you discover how little the students have actually done
about the corrections you lined up for them. I take this somewhat
hard because I commit very strongly to providing a clear standard
that they should follow and pinpoint precisely where they tread
falsely and what they need to change or omit. It turns out, however,
that I'm not the only one who make commitments. The students appear
to commit very strongly to the idea that their first drafts are
filled with great ideas and nice phrases which must be retained in
the final paper. At least this is how it seems to me. Of course, I
can understand that very well. I, too, become very attached to texts
I write, and I didn't learn humility in this regard until somewhat
late in my bachelor, so I've stood in their shoes myself. After all,
my MA degree was an exercise in textual revision, the only major
difference being that I had by then acquired much more experience
than my students currently have.

Being sympathetic to
their situation, does not sugarcoat the disappointment. Nor have the
three years entirely deprived me of that sense of hopefulness I
experience the days prior to Disappointment Day. I have pretty high
expectations of my students, and since they have chosen to walk the
university road I expect them to take the challenges they encounter.
Naturally, I do not expect equally much of everyone, nor do I treat
everyone the same way. A part of my job is to attempt evaluating each
student's character to such a degree that I can see whether he or she
belongs in academia or not, and those who appear to do are of course
given greater challenges.

However, since this
is a freshman's course and many of the students have embarked on
their first year in higher education, the bar is set extra low on
Disappointment Day. Since we are student assistants we do not have
the mandate to fail any of the students unless they do spectacularly
bad, and sometimes even they they are allowed to pass. Indeed, there
have been times when I've genuinely felt bad for not failing a
student. For instance, there was this one girl who handed in two
pages, which was only halfway to the mandatory minimum page count. I
gave her a few days to rework the paper and even offered to give her
a new date for the feedback session, as she had failed to show up to
her allotted time. A few days later - on the very day of the new
deadline - I finally heard back from her and found she had managed to
expand her opus into three pages. Since I had no more time to give
her - this was close to the deadline for sending the lists of
candidates to the exam office - I decided to let her pass, and
immediately felt bad for doing so.

This time, since it is
spring and not late in the autumn and close to the exams, I do have
more time to give them, but not without infringing upon the time they
need to write the next essay, which is due next friday. Since I'll be
correcting these papers, too, I want them to write as well as they
can, and they can't do this with more work hanging over them.
However, so far I have failed four of ca. 10 or 15 papers, all of
whom because they missed the point of the assignment, and three of
whom I really expected to do better. The fourth I really don't expect
that much from, but I hope at least he will be able to make it to
four pages.

When I woke up today
there was a warm rain of the kind that was really too early for
February, and the world grey and white. It was one more rainy day in
Norway, and one more Disappointment Day in my career as a student
assistant.

torsdag 14. februar 2013

Ferret conducting a choir of geese, taken from the liturgical MS known as the Gänsebuch (1503-10), the Book of Geese, named after this particular illumination. The picture is taken from this website.

(...) and the
sword with the belt was taken from the altar, and, turning to the
king, the bishop said: "Receive this"

- The Deeds of
the Kings of Saxony, Widukind of Corvey (my translation)This
week began very roughly. For two consecutive days I sat down with
students to give them feedback on their assignments in a freshman
course in ancient and medieval history. The assignment is an essay
meant to prepare them for writing their exams, and as a teaching
assistant it is my job to correct their papers and give them
constructive criticism. It is a heavy job as it involves a lot of
textual work and a lot of repetitive work, seeing as many students
tread falsely on the same steps. The task grows into a certain
monotony when you read the fourth paper in a row where the student
fails to properly establish a foundation for the argumentative part
of the assignment. It is, despite certain grievances, a great job,
and it is also a duty I have to fulfill to my students. I wish,
however, they would fulfill their duties to me by writing complete
drafts.

Most of my students
are freshmen and freshwomen, straight out of the Norwegian equivalent
to senior high and unaccustomed to anything the university throws at
them. They have of course been through a similar situation in the
first term, but one autumn is not enough time to get used to the ways
and means of higher education. Some of my students are more
experienced, but they come from different disciplines - predominantly
arcaheology - and are not entirely adjusted to the style of history.
For two group sessions I tried to prepare them for the big test, and
I laid down some very simple and fundamental guidelines for how to
write a good essay, and presented a few things to avoid in order to
keep me happy while correcting their papers. I had rather high hopes
as they seemed to take it all in, but it turned out most of the first
drafts were far from how I had expected them to be, since they failed
to use the structure I had given them or, even worse, had only jotted
down a handful of points for future work.

I have 25 students
who signed up for my classes, and so far there has been an attendance
of 15-19, which I'm quite happy about. In addition, I've graded
roughly 13 papers for external students who received their feedback
via e-mail. As you understand, I've read a lot of text dealing with
the same material, and I would be lying if I said the repetition
never got to me. The corrections eventually culminate in the feedback
sessions mentioned earlier, and while they are the most challenging
aspect of the job, they are also the most rewarding.

The sessions usually
follow the same pattern: the students knock on my door or are spotted
through the open door, invited in and asked to sit down in a rather
comfortable chair. I usually begin with allowing them to comment on
their own work, so as to gauge the expectations. I then commence to
point out the various flaws or shortcomings, while making sure to
commend them for what they have done well. Finally, after
approximately ten to fifteen minutes I hand them their papers like a
bishop gives a king his sword and conclude my sermon with "do
you have any questions?" The whole ritual is very orderly and
uncomplicated, and I have so far never had any unpleasant encounters
or reactions.

Some sessions are of course a greater delight
than others, and this depends entirely on the student. Some students
are more engaged in the subject than others and are very eager to
discuss the topic or to ask questions pertaining to the task ahead of
them, the final draft. In some cases - and although they are rare, I
highly appreciate them - the students want to shake hands as a sign
of thank you, and that is an extraordinary feeling.

Not every student is
as comfortable as that in my presence, or as enthused about learning
and receiving criticism. Some students ostensibly take this course as
a one-year engagement, either to scoop up what they consider easy
points or to take a year doing something they believe is easy while
making up their minds about what to do with their lives. This does
not automatically make them disinterested - indeed, some do go on to
take a bachelor's degree - but it is in this demographic one finds
the less receptive students. Other students - freshmen or freshwomen
- are so new to what they partake in that they are uncomfortable with
the arrangement. This was especially so with one of the youngsters in
my group, who positively shook with nervousness for the entire
session. I felt really bad for him, poor lamb, and I tried my best to
be calm, soothing and positive - which was not an easy task as he had
handed in a very poor draft.

In sum, Monday and Tuesday
constituted a trial for me, a series of sessions where I had to
engage with a very varied lot of people and repeat myself over and
over again, since they generally struggled with the same issues and
had the same shortcomings. These sessions are situations in which I
have to be at my clearest, both in my mind and in my words, and I
have to evaluate the students as I speak to them and adjust my
sermons accordingly. This goes on for hours on end, broken only by
lunch and Latin classes, and at the end of the day I have either
talked or been talked to so much that the greatest bliss is silence.

The job is, as I've
said, a challenge. It is a very rewarding challenge, but it is also
very draining on your faculties. Not only because of the repetition
and monotony, but because it demands very much of you as a textual
critic and a fellow human being. You have to deal with the
frustrations that occur when students have ignored your advice or let
themselves be derailed into a cul-de-sac through a careless reading
of the assignment text. You have to be critical yet supportive,
all-knowing yet humble when you actually do make mistakes and you
have to be constantly present in both body and spirit. In a certain
way, this is why I find the lovely image from the Book of Geese a
suitable illustration of my plight: just as challenging it must be
for a ferret to conduct a choire of quaking and quacking geese, so,
too, is it a challenge for me to conduct the bewildered students
through a maze of technical issues and obstacles largely of their own
making.

In a few weeks' time it will all commence again as
the students prepare themselves for yet another compulsory
assignment. I just hope I am prepared to the task by then.

mandag 4. februar 2013

From 10.00 to 11.00 AM GMT today there
was held a press conference in Leicester presenting the verdict on
the so-called Greyfriars Skeleton, which was unearthed in an archaeological excavation beneath a Leicester
car park in September last year. The excavation was organised in a
joint venture by Leicester University, the Richard III Society and
Leicester City Council, and its specific purpose was to find the
remains of King Richard III, who was said to have been laid to rest
in a church now lost. When the skeleton was found, its spinal
curvature prompted speculations on whether this could be the infamous
king, immortalised by William Shakespeare as a monstrous hunchback,
and it seemed indeed as if the excavation had found exactly what it
sought to find. On today's press conference, the team of
archaeologists from Leicester University - headed by Richard Buckley
- presented their skeletal evidence, the historiographical evidence
and ultimately the DNA results in an orderly and sober fashion. The
academic verdict of the team was that the skeleton "beyond
reasonable doubt" belonged to the last Plantagenet king.

The conference attracted great
attention both in the UK and abroad, and it was a much-anticipated
event for historians and lay enthusiasts alike. The case is - by the
time I write this - the most viewed news-report on BBC's homepage, and on twitter Richard III
has been trending for hours as a consequence. Following the verdict,
the University of Leicester launched a new website about the excavation, and I'm
confident we will see many more activities pertaining to the
unearthed king in the foreseeable future.

Greyfriars, Leicester. Map taken from wikimedia

The resounding enthusiasm has,
unsurprisingly, found its counterpart in certain sceptical and/or
dismissive voices. This is of course a natural reaction, and
academics are, after all, required by their work description to be
sceptical about these things. Charlotte Higgins of the Guardian, for
instance, commented that this was "not really history, not in
any meaningful sense ",
and that the ultimate importance of the "jamboree" was
raising awareness of the university, attract interested people to the
discipline of archaeology by showcasing how experts work and,
finally, to secure funding.

Personally, I believe Higgins's
article, while raising an important concern, is too insistent upon
its own scepticism to comprehend the big picture. That the three
points she mentioned were achieved is - like the identity of the
skeleton - beyond reasonable doubt, and they are all three truly
important. However, the fact that we now have identified the remains
of a historical person, allows us to realign the facts we knew and
the myths we believed into a picture more fitting with the most
recently unearthed facts. This is indeed history in a meaningful
sense.

However, I also believe that the verdict concerning
the identity of the Greyfriars skeleton was not the most important
aspect of today's conference. During the conference, as the experts
presented the various facts they had discovered - tacitly and
carefully tying it into the big question of whether this was Richard,
while still withholding the ultimate verdict - it struck me that
regardless the end result of the conference, this event had already
proved its big importance. The most important aspect of today's
conference was not the identity of the skeleton, but rather showing
how much people actually care about history and that history is not
merely a thing of the past.

Today's verdict may be refuted in times
to come when technology has become even more refined, and people will
eventually grow accustomed to the revisions and confirmations of
historical facts today's verdict has provided. However, to my mind
the conference is a firm proof that historians and archaeologists are
needed in today's society, that they play their roles and that their
endeavours are justified by the enthusiasm of both professionals and
layfolk alike. In an age where there is a demand for solid and
tangible results in academia, events like this show that not only do
humanists achieve results, but that the populace eagerly anticipates
and show enthusiasm over these results. There is, in other words,
sufficient interest in history to not only justify but necessitate
professional historians and archaeologists, in order to unearth and
ultimately make sense of new facts. Whatever the duration of today's
verdict in Leicester, this particular aspect will stand the test of
time.

Om meg

Norwegian medievalist, bibliophile, lover of art, music and food. This blog is a mixture of things personal and scholarly and it serves as a venue for me to share things I find interesting with likeminded people.